Told 'em I finished school and I started my own business
They say, "Oh, you graduated?" — no, I decided I was finished.
They say, "Oh, you graduated?" — no, I decided I was finished.
"Kanye, can I talk to you for a minute? Me and the other faculty members was wonderin'...could you do a lil' som—somethin' beautiful, somethin' that the kids is gon' love when they hear it, that's gon' make them start jumpin' up and down, and sharin' candy and stuff. Think you could probably do somethin', for the kids, for graduation to sing?"
— DeRay Davis, "Intro"
The College Dropout is the debut album by American rapper Kanye West, released on February 10, 2004.
Though he had achieved success in the early 2000s as an in-house producer for Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records, West aspired to be a rapper, but struggled to get a record deal in part because of his middle-class background not fitting the image of Gangsta Rap, before being signed to Roc-A-Fella as an artist to prevent him from going elsewhere.
While he'd been recording songs for the album since 1999, the album (and West's career in general) kickstarted in 2002, when a car accident that left West with a broken jaw inspired his debut single, "Through the Wire", which became a US Top 20 hit.
Musically, the album's production consists of the "chipmunk soul" style that was West's trademark at the time, with considerable sampling of old soul music (and other songs) pitched up, with additional violin parts performed by Miri Ben-Ari.
Tracklist:
- "Intro (Skit)" (0:19)
- "We Don't Care" (3:59)
- "Graduation Day" (1:22)
- "All Falls Down" (featuring Syleena Johnson) (3:43)
- "I'll Fly Away" (1:09)
- "Spaceship" (featuring GLC and Consequence) (5:24)
- "Jesus Walks" (3:13)
- "Never Let Me Down" (featuring Jay-Z and J. Ivy) (5:24)
- "Get 'Em High" (featuring Talib Kweli and Common) (4:49)
- "Workout Plan (Skit)" (0:49)
- "The New Workout Plan" (5:22)
- "Slow Jamz" (featuring Twista and Jamie Foxx) (5:16)
- "Breathe In Breathe Out" (featuring Ludacris) (4:06)
- "School Spirit 1 (Skit)" (1:18)
- "School Spirit" (3:02)
- "School Spirit 2 (Skit)" (0:43)
- "Lil Jimmy (Skit)" (0:53)
- "Two Words" (featuring Mos Def, Freeway and the Boys' Choir of Harlem) (4:26)
- "Through the Wire" (3:41)
- "Family Business" (4:38)
- "Last Call" (12:40)
Tropes:
- Album Intro Track: "Intro", consisting of a skit where comedian DeRay Davis (doing a Bernie Mac impression) plays a school administrator talking to Kanye.
- Album Title Drop: On the final track, "Last Call":They expected that college dropout to drop and then flop
- Autotune: Used nowhere near as often as on future Kanye albums, but still present on John Legend's vocals on "Graduation Day".
- Bowdlerise: "School Spirit" is censored even on the explicit version of the album, as a condition of Aretha Franklin clearing the track's sample of her song "Spirit in the Dark".
- Cover Version: "I'll Fly Away" is a cover of a gospel standard performed by Tony Williams.
- Epic Rocking: "Last Call" is the longest song on any Kanye album, at 12:40, though much of that is Kanye retelling the story of how the album came to exist.
- Fading into the Next Song:
- The album's intro, where comedian DeRay Davis plays a school administrator who asks Kanye to play "somethin' for the kids", segues into the first song, "We Don't Care", which even starts with Kanye saying, "Oh, yeah. I got the perfect song for the kids to sing." That song in turn segues into the "Graduation Day" interlude, which starts with the administrator chastising Kanye for the song (since it's about the ugly lifestyle of growing up in the ghetto).
- The choir of "Jesus Walks" echoes into "Never Let Me Down".
- "I Want" Song: "Spaceship" is from the perspective of several men wishing to be free from their struggles and dead-end jobs, with the titular vehicle being a metaphor for success.
- Longest Song Goes Last: "Last Call", the final track, is almost 13 minutes long, more than twice the length of several of the rest of the album's tracks.
- Meaningful Name: "Through the Wire", which was recorded while Kanye's jaw was wired shut after being broken in a car accident.
- Non-Appearing Title: "Graduation Day", "Slow Jamz".
- Refuge in Audacity: The album starts with a school administrator (played by DeRay Davis) asking Kanye to play a song that "the kids" (the students at his college) would enjoy. His response? The song "We Don't Care", a sarcastic celebration of growing up in the ghetto that boasts about such lifestyle highlights as dealing drugs out of desperation and not being expected to live past the age of 25. The latter topic is even sung about in the chorus by a children's choir (both ironic in that a bunch of kids are singing about "[making] it past 25", and that it ties into the administrator's infantilization of college students as "kids").
- Sampling: A key part of the album's production style.
- "We Don't Care" samples "I Just Wanna Stop" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch.
- "All Falls Down" interpolates "Mystery of Iniquity" by Lauryn Hill (the original version sampled Hill, who refused sample clearance, requiring West to get Syleena Johnson to re-record it)
- "Spaceship" samples "Distant Lover" by Marvin Gaye.
- "Jesus Walks" samples "Walk With Me" by The ARC Choir.
- "Never Let Me Down" interpolates "Maybe It's The Power Of Love" by Blackjack, the largely-now-forgotten metal band fronted by Michael Bolton.
- In addition, Jay-Z's verse on the song is recycled from the remix of his song "Hovi Baby".
- "School Spirit" samples "Spirit in the Dark" by Aretha Franklin.
- "Through the Wire" samples "Through the Fire" by Chaka Khan.
- "Last Call" samples "Mr. Rockefeller" by Bette Midler.
- Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Kanye alludes to his experiences working these throughout the album, with "Spaceship" in particular being about his time working at The Gap.
- Spoken Word in Music: All the skits, plus "Graduation Day", J. Ivy's poem in "Never Let Me Down", and Kanye's own monologue about the making of the album at the end of "Last Call".
